Sales of desktop PC sales for the first week in February rose 180.6% compared to the same week last year. Likewise? sales of notebooks also rose 187.8% for that first week in Feb. Also interesting to note that the average selling price of PC didn’t rise as a result of Windows Vista.

Out of the four versions of Windows Vista it was the Premium edition that sold the most with 68.2% of the sales while Basic accounted for 31%. The biggest surprise was that only 0.7% of the sales were of the Ultimate edition but this has been accounted to the fact it wasn’t as widely offered as the other in retail outlets, also it is thought a lot of people will be buying one of the cheaper version and possibly upgrading at a later date.

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“On January 29th, Microsoft will celebrate the launch of two amazing products that represent the culmination of a tremendous team effort,” an email message from Microsoft reads. “Millions of people –Microsoft employees, developers, valued customers, bloggers, families, media, the entire industry–have come together like never before and added their own individual imprints to help make Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office system the most tested products in Microsoft history.”

Lunch is included…

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Some analysts predict that Vista will be an immediate success, while others think it will take longer to pick up, saying that both firms and personal users will not upgrade for the sake of it.

Rather, these commentators predict that most people will only start using Vista when they eventually decide to replace their current Microsoft-installed computers.

What is certain, is that the success of Vista will be vital for Microsoft.

Together with its Office productivity software – a new 2007 version of which is being launched alongside Vista – they account for more than 56% of Microsoft’s sales.

My take on this is that yes it will be a success but only when the technology comes down in price and the top end systems needed to run Vista properly are more accessible to the main stream.

I don’t think any business is going to pick this up before Christmas and I don’t think the main stream public will until mid next year.

So the next few weeks and months will be interesting to see who is right. As for Office 2007, I’ll be putting something together in the next few day on this so will reserve my comments until then.

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However end users still aren’t likely to be getting a copy this side of Christmas, right now only business and msdn subscribers will be able to get hold of a copy although I can’t see many businesses rushing to role it out company wide.

If you buy a computer now however you are likely to be able to upgrade to a similar copy of Vista depending on what OS you get with your PC and as mentioned previously once you Vista you can also upgrade to any edition for a nominal fee. Check out my other post on Vista for details of that.

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